y
possessed the imagination of an Italian, when, like Gian Maria Visconti,
he came to relish the sight of torment for its own sake, or when he
sought to inspire fear by the spectacle of pain, then no Spaniard
surpassed him in the ingenuity of his devices. In gratifying his thirst
for vengeance he was never contented with mere murder. To obtain a
personal triumph at the expense of his enemy by the display of superior
cunning, by rendering him ridiculous, by exposing him to mental as well
as physical anguish, by wounding him through his affections or his sense
of honor, was the end which he pursued. This is why so many acts of
violence in Italy assumed fantastic forms. Even the country folk showed
an infernal art in the execution of their _vendette_. To serve the flesh
of children up to their fathers at a meal of courtesy is mentioned, for
example, as one mode of wreaking vengeance in country villages. Thus the
high culture and aesthetic temperament of the Italians gave an
intellectual quality to their vices. Crude lust and bloodshed were
insipid to their palates: they required the pungent sauce of a
melodramatic catastrophe.

[1] Those who wish to gain a lively notion of Spanish cruelty
in Italy should read, besides the accounts of the Sacco di Roma
by Guicciardini and Buonaparte, the narrative of the Sacco di
Prato in the _Archivio Storico Italiano_, vol. i., and
Cagnola's account of the Spanish occupation of Milan, ib. vol.
iii.

[2] De Comines more than once notices the humanity shown by the
Italian peasants to the French army.

The drunkenness and gluttony of northern nations for a like reason found
no favor in Italy. It disgusted the Romans beyond measure to witness the
swinish excesses of the Germans. Their own sensuality prompted them to a
refined Epicureanism in food and drink; on this point, however, it must
be admitted that the prelates, here as elsewhere foremost in profligacy,
disgraced the age of Leo with banquets worthy of Vitellius.[1] We trace
the same play of the fancy, the same promptitude to quicken and
intensify the immediate sense of personality at any cost of
after-suffering, in another characteristic vice of the Italians.
Gambling among them was carried further and produced more harm than it
did in the transalpine cities. This we gather from Savonarola's
denunciations, from the animated pictures drawn by Alberti in his
_Trattato della Famiglia_ and _Cena della Fa